


as long as we're going down (baby, you should stick around)

by BisexualFeminist



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (later that is), Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blood and Violence, Developing Relationship, Explicit Language, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Mild Sexual Content, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 12:32:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13787841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BisexualFeminist/pseuds/BisexualFeminist
Summary: The world had gone to shit a long time ago, Robbie decided. Now fate was just taking its revenge.Unfortunately for fate, he didn’t plan on dying yet.Or: Daisy and Robbie meet in the midst of an apocalypse, facing the infected and immoral remnants of humanity and find light in the darkness.





	as long as we're going down (baby, you should stick around)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DreamingofStardust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingofStardust/gifts).



> Hello! This fic was inspired by Dreaming Of Stardust (@biluata on tumblr)'s moodboard of a quakerider zombie apocalypse au, so kudos to her for letting me use the moodboard as inspiration!

The world had gone to shit a long time ago, Robbie decided. Now fate was just taking its revenge.

 

Unfortunately for fate, he didn’t plan on dying yet.

 

The world was quiet now and left to the mercy of nature. Electricity no longer throbbed through wires and power grids, neon no longer buzzed in signs and the only car you saw roaring down the road was his, powered by hoarded and siphoned gas.

 

At least he still _had_ his car.

 

To think this had all started with one man.

 

Robbie had always had some level of disdain for cults, but now he had a burning hatred for them. After all, the Chitauri, some insane group of people determined to take down the world, had started out as a cult.

 

With the help of some wealthy businessman named Loki Laufeyson, they’d scraped together enough funding and equipment to crack open space and expose the entire planet to an alien virus.

 

It might seem odd that he knew this much, but Robbie had kept up with the news almost religiously, witnessing every step of the way that had gotten the human race to this point.

 

The virus had only infected a select few at first, but thanks to some crackpot scientist it mutated, infecting millions and turning them into mindless killers, which of course you never knew unless they cut themselves. They bled something black and thick and disgusting and could only be stopped with a bullet to the head.

 

The whole thing felt like a damn thriller movie made by some edgy punk in his mom’s basement.

 

Hell had cracked open and put itself in the Earth’s place, and Robbie’s family, friends, not to mention his entire life had been uprooted or destroyed. All he had left was his car and a few straws to grasp at.

 

And then there was her.

* * *

 

He met her in a darkened convenience store in Helena, Montana, dim and only lit by emergency lights and his flashlight.

 

He walked in with all the usual caution, gun in hand, taking in every inch of the store. The door closed behind him with a jingling that made him grit his teeth, so loud he almost didn’t hear the rustling coming from the back.

 

Every nerve in his body went on high alert, his grip on the gun tightening as he took careful steps towards the source of the sound, until he honed in on the source and started forward, knocking its only line of defense, a shelf, away, and an assortment of candy boxes crashed to the floor and he found himself aiming at a woman who couldn’t have been much older than him.

 

Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t the only one with a gun.

 

Unfortunately for _her_ , it’d skidded away out of reach, and he had her pinned, less than two feet away from her.

 

He would have shot her by now if it weren’t for her eyes. Big, brown and full of a fire that was never in the menacing glimmer of the infected gaze.

 

“You one of _them_?” he said, not moving from where he was standing but needing confirmation.

 

“Are you?” she countered, breathing heavily, hair hanging over half her face.

 

Neither of them could make a move. That’s what this shit did to you, it made you crazy and suspect everyone, because anyone could be a monster and no amount of pleading and screaming could prove anything, only by bleeding could you get any truth out of anyone.

 

He saw the shard of jagged glass in her hand. “Don’t-”

 

“I’ll prove it,” she said. “Whatever color I bleed, it’s what you do that lets me know what you are.”

 

That was fairly solid, all things considered and while it wasn’t airtight, it was the best plan they had.

 

“Go on, then,” he said.

 

Her gaze broke from keeping his, and slid over behind him, and a horrified look came over her expression.

 

He faltered, glancing for one second, before the world suddenly went sideways from the way she swept a leg out, knocking him off-balance. Before he  could put a bullet through her leg, she had her own gun trained on him. Shit.

 

Another impasse.

 

She swept the hair out of her face, holding it back as if to show him something, and that’s when he saw it, a cut just above her eye, thin and streaked with red, not black.

 

Relieved, he dropped his gun, and she did the same.

 

“Okay, now that we’re not trying to kill each other,” she said, “What’s your name?”

 

“Robbie,” he answered. “Yours?”

 

“Daisy,” she replied.

 

“Are you by yourself?” he asked, and at her nod, he raised an eyebrow. It was almost impossible to survive by yourself out here. The only reason he was able to was that he had a goddamn car.

 

“I wasn’t always,” she explained. “I was with a group of friends from work, but we got separated a month ago.”

 

“You’ve been on your own for a month?” The longest anyone else had survived that he’d known of was two weeks, and they’d screwed that up by attacking him.

 

“Didn’t say it’d been easy.”

 

“Fair enough,” he conceded. “You headed somewhere, Daisy?”

 

“I managed to hack into what’s left of the radio air,” she replied. “The rumor’s that there’s some sort of survivor camp up in Salem, Massachusetts. Truth is, that was a week ago. I don’t know if it got overrun with infected like the others or-”

 

“‘The others?’” he echoed. “What do you mean?”

 

Her features softened a bit. “You didn’t know?”

 

“Know what?”

 

“A lot of the refugee camps got breached,” she said. “From what I’ve heard, everyone who was there is either dead, infected, or running in the woods.”

 

It felt like someone had thrown a brick at his chest. Not after all this, it couldn’t-

 

“You okay?” she said, seeing his distraught expression.

 

“My uncle and brother,” he said dully. “They were headed for one of the camps.” Maybe it was stupid, opening up to some random girl who’d been holding a gun on him moments before, but it wasn’t like there was anyone else around.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “My parents were on their way to one, too.”

 

That was it. No “Maybe they made it out,” no “You don’t know that they’re gone,” just… “I’m sorry.” He couldn’t decide if that was worse.

 

“Sorry,” he echoed her earlier sentiments.

 

“Yeah,” she said. “There’s nothing to do but keep going on living, y’know?”

 

“Is that what this is?” Living means working a 9 to 5 and driving down an open road with the windows down, not having to worry about an Infected attack. Whatever he’s been doing for last few months, it isn’t living.

 

“Surviving, then,” she amended. “Surviving just means holding on until you can get to a place to be able to live again.”

 

“Fair enough.”

 

There’s a bit of silence then, and she shifted from one foot to the other. “...Look, I don’t want to impose, but I heard you drive up. Is there any way I could ride with you? Just until I find a way to get to Salem?”

 

He thought about that. He’d originally been on his way to Calgary, in Canada, where Tio and Gabe were supposed to be, but now…

 

He didn’t want to accept it. It was stupid, he knew it, but he couldn’t make himself believe it. Maybe they hadn’t been breached, maybe they were okay.

 

He thought about the map in the glovebox of his Charger, all the math he’d done. She didn’t have a car, obviously; it’d probably take her a month at absolute minimum to get there on foot and the chances of her making it weren’t high. On the other hand, it’d probably take him a few days, including stops and refueling.

 

Besides, he didn’t want her highly likely death on his conscience.

 

“Sure,” he said finally. “As long as you don’t slow me down.” He had no idea what would come after they reached her destination, but he’d cross that bridge when he got to it.

 

“I won’t,” she promised.

 

“Good. Grab whatever you need from here and we’ll get going.”

 

It’s that exchange that changes his life, only this time, maybe it’s for the better.

**Author's Note:**

> Comment/kudos, please!!!


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